As there are some pictures being released from HiRISE of proposed MSL landing sites, I thought I'd give you what little I know about the process. As of the HiRISE team meeting a month ago or so, there were about 40 proposed sites to land MSL. These sites were prioritized, and are being photographed roughly in priority order. Each site requires a picture from each of the 3 main cameras (CTX, CRISM, and HiRISE) in their highest resolution in order to proceed. If it's determined that there can be a safe landing site, as well as interesting science targets, then they will advance to the next level, where I presume they will "wallpaper" the areas with HiRISE and CRISM (CTX, well, they get the whole landing ellipse in one shot, I think...). They likely will also photograph science areas near the proposed sites to look for interesting targets. After that, well, your guess is as good as mine. Note that none of this is official, but it's what I would expect. Also note that the landing site selection is still opened to new suggestions, the ones they have so far are not a complete list. The priority also doesn't mean anything right now other than they are the targets which will be photographed first, these priorities are still subject to change. But, well, I thought I'd send this out there for you all sink your teeth on, it really is quite interesting!
Great to get the inside scoop on the MSL landing site process, tuvas. Do you know if all 40 sites will get high resolution stereo coverage by HiRISE, or is that being saved for the short list later?
The wonderful thing about covering so many sites at such high resolution is that many of the places not chosen for MSL will come up again as proposals for Exo-Mars, the astrobiology rover, etc. This data set will be valuable WAY into the future.
Tuvas, are you allowed to post the locations of any (or all! ) of the 40? Please don't do so if this would violate any of your organization's policies, but I'm sure we'd all be fascinated by this first cut...particularly since sifting through the torrent of MRO data alone is pretty much impossible unless you're rich enough to have a few score RAIDs & associated processing capability...
I remember one of the requirement was that the landing site would be inhospitable to life, so that the lander doesn't introduce some microorganisms to a place where they could survive. Any astrobiological missions would probably go a place where some present microbial life is possible, e.g. next to volcanoes or to the bottom of Vallis Marineris.
The complete process is fully documented here
http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/msl/workshops/1st_workshop/program.html
First Landing Site Workshop
May 31 through June 2, 2006, Pasadena, California
33 sites were shortlisted from about 90 suggested at the first meeting. Three more were just added after being described in a poster at LPSC, and all can be seen illustrated at the THEMIS MSL landing site support page:
http://themis.asu.edu/landingsites/
Phil
Since HiROC doesn't have a handy index to landing site imagery like ASU does for Odyssey, perhaps it'd be useful to post links here to the proposed MSL site images as they get released at HiROC.
From the 28 March release:
Proposed MSL Site in Becquerel Crater http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_001480_2015
Proposed MSL Site in Margaritifer Basin http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_002193_1670
Proposed MSL Site in Melas Chasma http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_002551_1700
Proposed MSL Site in Nili Fossae Crater http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_002743_1985
Proposed MSL Site in NE Syrtis Major http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_002809_1965
Proposed MSL Site in Elysium/Avernus Colles http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_002832_1770
Proposed MSL site in Xanthe/Hypanis Vallis http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_002919_1915
From the 4 April release:
Proposed MSL Site in Southwest Arabia Terra http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_002812_1855
Proposed MSL Site in Mawrth Vallis http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_003063_2050
Proposed MSL Site in Nili Fossae Trough http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_003086_2015
--Emily
Wow - thanks Emily - this is incredibly helpful - YOU ROCK!*
Quite a bit of diversity in those pics, but I always have a soft spot for Melas Chasma. Now, whether Melas has a soft spot for MSL to land remains to be seen - Given a landing ellipse of 10km, are we confident with the skycrane steering clear to level terrain in that frame?
*Sorry, my 80's were showing.
I vote for the Hellas location. Lowest point on Mars, highest atmospheric pressure, layered deposits, channels, and generally unlike any other place visited thus far. Good stuff.
Me too; seems like that's where MSL might have the best chance of finding small, isolated patches of no-kidding mud at certain times of the year! Plus, I'd imagine that the denser air might reduce terminal EDL risks at least a bit.
Just as long as there's no actual risk of it getting stuck in the mud.
--Greg :-)
Surely one of the most important lessons from MER is that interesting chemical signatures seen from orbit (Meridiani) are more likely to result in interesting geology on the surface than interesting morphological features (Gusev). As they only have one MSL I hope they go for a phyllosilicate site.
Although the Meridiani sites will be a "safer" bet and would certainly help advance our knowledge of the processes that led to the hematite deposits, I can't help but think that there are a lot more new/interesting options out there. We can come back to Meridiani a few rovers from now.
That's a really good argument re "follow the clays", SFJ. Targeting hematite with Oppy certainly yielded findings beyond all expectations almost from Sol 0; minerology does seem to trump morphology in all relevant particulars for a mission like MSL.
Okay, that's the worst pun of the week...you get the virtual prize of 100 quatloos & a cookie...
Considering that a mission requirement for MSL is kilometers, with ?tens? of km planned for post primary misison operations, the overriding secondary requirement for a site is accessible diversity. Yeah, that's a contradiction in terms. The overriding primary requirement is to target geology made of materials of biological and/or origins-of-life significance. There is a preliminary consensus that materials LIKE the phyllosilicate bearing terrains are top candidates.
To a certain extent, Meridiani sulfate dune deposits are "been there, done that", though we would learn much more from a revisit with new instrumentation. But there are other, vastly more complicated, exposures of Meridiani layered deposits, some in spectacular "etched" badlands in the central part and north-east parts of Meridiani Sinus (the old albedo feature.. the split in the Sinus: "Dawes Forked Bay" is actually an Earth-observable patch of high albedo badlands.
Oppy's Meridiani plains are geologically boring on the level of "if you've seen several stratigraphic sections, you've seen them all" Victoria will let us go deeper stratigraphically than Endurance, but all the evidence so far is that it's "more of the same with variations". The landing site was ideal for Opportunity, especially with it's extended treks to Endurance, the etched terrain, Erebus and Victoria, but the MSL rover would probably need to go 100 km or some large amount to get to dramatically different materials, if it was landed in Eagle crater.
Spirit was lucky. The basalt plain on the floor of Gusev was a near-disaster, though we would still have learned far more about martian surficial geology in lava plains than we learned from Vikings and Pathfinder. The pure luck in landing close enough to the uber-diverse geology of the Columbia hills made all the difference in the mission.
A "Best" landing site for MSL will be more like Gusev than Meridiani -- We will go to check out a primary mission objective set of geologic formations and materials, but we will want to have the maximum possible "go to" diversity of geologic materials of diverse geologic ages, once we've checked out and worked over the primary target. The more utterly distinct the accessible terrains, and the more different in ages the materials they can reach, the more transforming MSL will be to what we know of Mars, compared with what we will know from Viking/Pathfiner/MER/Phoenix. Spirit on Gusev lava plains, unable to reach older terrain, would have extended our knowledge. In the hills, it's transforming it.
MSL's a bit open ended really - some of the landing sites include a 10km 'drive to' from a safe landing site nearby.
Doug
Gotta love it...hopefully the 4th generation rovers will get hundreds of kms!
An updated list of MSL sites as seen from MRO, including the May 2 releases:
From the 28 March release:
Proposed MSL Site in Becquerel Crater http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_001480_2015
Proposed MSL Site in Margaritifer Basin http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_002193_1670
Proposed MSL Site in Melas Chasma http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_002551_1700
Proposed MSL Site in Nili Fossae Crater http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_002743_1985
Proposed MSL Site in NE Syrtis Major http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_002809_1965
Proposed MSL Site in Elysium/Avernus Colles http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_002832_1770
Proposed MSL site in Xanthe/Hypanis Vallis http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_002919_1915
From the 4 April release:
Proposed MSL Site in Southwest Arabia Terra http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_002812_1855
Proposed MSL Site in Mawrth Vallis http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_003063_2050
Proposed MSL Site in Nili Fossae Trough http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_003086_2015
From the 2 May release:
Proposed MSL Site in Eberswalde Crater http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_003222_1565
Proposed MSL Site in Nilo Syrtis http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_003231_2095
Proposed MSL Site in Juventae Chasma http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_003368_1755
--Emily
For those playing along at home, the MSL Landing Site Selection User’s Guide to Engineering Constraints has been updated slightly (to Version 3). See http://webgis.wr.usgs.gov/msl/Engineering.htm to download.
I think something more like "indurated soil" would be best -- that is, something that doesn't move with the wind, but that won't be too hard to dig through.
Has anybody here thought through whether that recent Odyssey THEMIS release about ground ice being patchy has anything to do with MSL landing site selection?
--Emily
The Riding with Robots Podcast has an interview with Ashwin Vasavada, Jpl's Deputy Project Scientist on MSL.
It's basically a 20 minute summary of MSL's planned capabilities. I learned a few things, but then - I haven't spent a lot of time learning about MSL.
Podcast Site
http://web.mac.com/bdunford/iWeb/Riding_with_Robots/Podcast/Podcast.html
Jack
I'm surprised that no one has talked about landing near the newly discovered Martian blackholes or possibly the guyser at the pole (although they may be too dangerous). At the very least, MSL should land somewhere that is not favorable to solar powered rovers.
Considering the moderately persuasive argument supporting the notion of a past ocean in the northern hemisphere, as reported in the current issue of Nature (http://www.nature.com.libux.utmb.edu/nature/journal/v447/n7146/full/nature05873.html - if you have access), I would be inclined to shift my preference to a landing site which would be near exposed sediments from the floor of that ocean, perhaps in delta deposits. To me, the odds are that if any macroscopic life ever evolved on Mars, it would have been in this ocean, and sedimentary deposits from the bottom of the ocean would be the best places to look for fossils, as well as a sedimentary sequence which tells an interesting story. I'm not sure whether there would be any benefit to traversing the remnant shoreline itself.
I'm having trouble matching landing site candidates with the map in the paper, but Nilo Syrtis and Marwth Vallis might be good.
Agreed. In the absence of large scale drilling equipment it would be useful to visit a relatively fresh crater that has excavated through marine sediments.
Aye, and the other one.
Why does elevation matter in designing the rover? I can understand latitude mattering because of communications with an orbiter, but elevation?
The higher you go - the less air your parachute has to work with. 'lower' altitiudes make for an easier landing.
Doug
You might want to take a look at the latest version of the http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/msl/memoranda/MSL_Eng_User_Guide_v3.pdf, which discusses the elevation limitations.
The more pounds per square foot (grams per square centimeter) of vehicle you have behind a heatshield (and a bigger vehicle is more or less inevitably deeper, front to back with more "column mass"), the less the atmosphere can slow you down before you do "ares-braking" instead of "aero-braking"...
zip..... CRUNCH!
I'm going to be off by a factor of a few times, but here's a zero'h order armwave...
Earth. 1 atmosphere surface pressure. 14 pounds (mass) of air per square inch.
Mars. 1/200'th atmosphere surface pressure. That's about 10 ounces / 30 grams per square inch. Double that (roughly) to compensate for gravity. How many ounces per square inch is the MSL in it's heat shield? There's only so many pounds of atmosphere in the way of a so many pound entry vehicle trying to slow it down.
When an entry vehicle masses more than a column of atmosphere of the same diameter between surface and space, it just can't slow down a vehicle before the vehicle hits. Would a column of atmosphere (along an entry trajectory) massing the same as an entry vehicle slow it down 50%... very very roughly, I think so (ignoring gravity).
After looking at all the MRO landing site images and counting rocks and such, it just makes sense to this complete amateur that the only place to set down MSL is on/near the famous ice packs of Elysium Planatia.
water? / ice? / extant life?
What would I add to the mission?
...bring an industrial sized RAT and BRUSH
for more info, Google: ice packs mars
Elysium Planitia (AKA ice pack) might look like a good landing site, but there are some problems with it. First, it might be classed as a "special region", which MSL will not be sufficiently sterilized to land in. In the event of a crash, the RTG could encounter ice and create a warm water oasis (not very big, certainly, but still viable). This is not allowed for MSL. (Phoenix should encounter ice, but it will remain very cold).
Second, MSL's instruments don't suit it. A drill might be needed to get to any ice. This could be an ideal spot for a thoroughly sterilized deep drill mission in the future.
Also, Elysium Planitia is really a one target site. Once you have looked at one location, what is there to do? It's quite uniform. MSL is designed to explore up and down a stack of sediments, or a similar multi-target site. For this reason, MSL would also be wasted on one of the 'windows' mentioned in a post above.
An ideal MSL site will have dozens of distinct targets within about 10 or 15 km of the landing site, plus a potential for a really good extended mission with many more targets over a much longer traverse.
Phil
Depending on what NASA's "Major" finding's that they plan to announce, and the final science results from the phoenix mission, Im wondering if Vastitas Borealis could be added to the allready 6 final landing sites for MSL?. Phoenix's landing site looks sofar VERY science rich, and worthy for exploration for another mission .
Mike, could you go into more detail about the lat limitations? Only thing I can think of besides temp is relay satellite availability, and that's far from guaranteed during the mission timeline; it's a somewhat puzzling constraint.
For DTE, how far above or below the horizon at the phoenix landing site would earth be?.
PHX doesn't do DTE But Earth on Sol 69 is moving from 4.7 degrees above the Northern horizon at 10pm local, to 47.8 degrees above the Southern Horizon at 10AM local
I was saying DTE for MSL hypothetically if MSL were to land at the phoenix landing site .
I wish nice reading !
http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/msl2009/workshops/3rd_workshop/program.html
Cruise stage
WOW - more funky flight hardware!!
I hope when it's all shipped to KSC, it's still in pieces. Watching that final ATLO stuff via KSC webcams was fantastic... Phoenix didn't really have much of that. Of course, what I hope more, is that it all comes together well, and on time
That thing does NOT look stable.
I found this article about The Potential MSL Site: Miyamoto Crater
It explains a lot about the geology of the site and the pluses and minuses of the site.
The article is dated September 16, 2008 and was put out by
The Martian Chronicles
http://martianchronicles.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/potential-msl-site-miyamoto-crater/
http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/msl2009/workshops/3rd_workshop/talks/Irwin_Holden_opt.pdf http://martianchronicles.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/potential-msl-site-holden-crate/!!!!
Looks like reactions weren't all the same...
"After the vote is revealed, there is some discussion of whether things were fair: (Diana Blaney: Is there a bimodal distribution related to who is in the room -- basically the 'spectroscopy' sites have sunk to the middle from comparatively favored position at early landing sites...Steve Ruff: Why did the vote go on the questions tailored in this way? A pure ranking would have been better)."
"A bunch of people are bummed out by the results (quite openly), but some are happy (less openly)."
http://spaceurope.blogspot.com/2008/09/msl-3rd-landing-site-selection-meeting_3482.html.
Ranking
Eberswalde 44,53
Holden 43,20
Gale 41,95
Mawrth 37,92
Nili 37,08
S Meridiani 28,30
Miyamoto 23,84
Eberswalde on top ? Why not Gale or Holden?
They are still recommendations. But could it means the last three are droped out at least?
Go Gale! MSL will be a high mountain climber
Damn you HRSC - two observations of it, and neither have colour....anyhooo
http://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/mex/mex-m-hrsc-5-refdr-dtm-v1/mexhrs_2001/browse/1927/h1927_0000_nd4.jpg
GO GALE. BEAT HOLDEN.
Doug
I've got a couple of simple (simplistic?) questions about the Gale crater central peak. Why is it so much higher than the crater rim, and why is it so neatly stratified? I've read about the supposed burial and exhumation, but if that mountain consists of sediments all the way down then surely it's not a central peak in the usual sense at all? Is it really a sort of residual mesa that is located in the middle of Gale purely by chance?
I thought central peaks in craters were normally chaotically jumbled piles of uplifted material, usually a bit lower than the crater rim. Can someone explain briefly what's hypothesised to be going on here or point me to a (not too technical) reference?
There's plenty of PDF's on the meeting website that talk about Gale and explain a possible history of it - most of which I don't understand ( my favoritism is purely down to aesthetics ) - but from what I do understand it's not a central peak in the way one thinks of a normal central peak ( being formed at impact ) - but has been built up since.
MSL landing site should be scientifically valuable, but should be spectacular also. Eberswalde is not very spectacular, Holden and Gale are spectacular. In case of similar scientific value, important PR aspect should be taken into consideration. Potential disappointment of simple US taxpayer can decrease support for next Mars missions.
I like the geology of Holden Crater and was glad to see it make the top three candidates list. However, there has been some talk in the past of the site being too cold for full operation at the time of landing. In the "Second MSL Landing Site Workshop" thread, tglotch said this in post #28:
"Holden and Terby came very close to not making the final list. They are both very interesting scientifically, but we were told by engineers that because of their high southern latitudes and cold temperatures that if MSL landed at one of those sites it would have to lie dormant for the first month or so and then operate at only a 30-50% duty cycle."
Was anything said of this at the Third Workshop? And just out of curiosity, is there some reason why RHUs (radioisotope heater units) couldn't be used instead of electrical heaters for areas not warmed by the RTG waste heat on MSL? Wouldn't that allow for less dormancy after landing?
With the expectation that MSL will eventually fly, Science published an article on the down selection of MSL sites at the recent workshop. Excerpts follow:
Culture Wars Over How to Find an Ancient Niche for Life on Mars
Richard A. Kerr
In deciding how to do that [maximize science], most attendees aligned themselves with one of two parties. Spectroscopists, who find martian minerals from orbit by their distinctive spectral colors, tended to favor sites that beam strong spectral signatures of rock altered by water. Geologists, by contrast, preferred sites whose geological forms speak most eloquently of past water pooling on the surface.
Leading spectroscopists had proposed two of the seven landing sites still in the running (Science, 9 November 2007, p. 908) because the sites simply screamed "water!" to them... Bibring advocated landing on the highlands above Mawrth Vallis, a site blazing with the spectral colors of water-related minerals... For similar reasons, John Mustard of Brown University and colleagues argued for landing in Nili Fossae, a great crack in the martian crust from which MSL could drive into a side canyon where many of the half-dozen aqueous minerals of the region outcrop.
[Geologists, however, weren't convinced.] In the case of Mawrth, was the source of the clays sediment that washed into a lake? Was it volcanic ash that fell from the sky? Was it crustal rock altered by hot springs?
...many geologists favored landing in 67-kilometer-wide Eberswalde Crater. "It's the best delta on Mars," meaning a river must have flowed into a lake in Eberswalde, dropping its load of sediment on entering the still water... Other favorites of geologists were Holden Crater, another likely crater lake with layered, clay-bearing deposits but no true delta, and Gale Crater, whose 5-kilometer-high mound of layered deposits boasts a variety of water-related minerals, although the origin of the mound is uncertain.
JPL announces final 4 candidates:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-219
They are:
- Gale
- Eberswalde
- Holden
- Mawrth
Is this really news? or did I miss something? I had a sense that those were the finalists anyway.
Not really! It only makes sense to take advantage of the deluge of new data, especially CRISM and HiRISE. Why stick to the old list if a really compelling new one turns up? It would have to be really good to get on the list.
Phil
Just a thought.....
In the light of the MSL mission statement 'Mars Science Laboratory is a rover that will assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment able to support microbial life. In other words, its mission is to determine the planet's "habitability." ' at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/overview/ and 'a growing awareness of potential, widespread mud volcanism in the lowlands of Mars' which has the potential to bring to the surface a lot of interesting chemicals - even that associated with microbial life forms if such life is/were to have existed http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2009/pdf/1034.pdf and 'the features could be mud volcanoes but may also be sedimentary remnants from retreating glaciers. However, either way, the presence of fine grained clays in the deposits would be ideal locations to look for organic molecules, "like amonia and proteins." ' http://arizonageology.blogspot.com/2009/03/mud-volcanoes-on-mars.html
And that a lot more could be discovered about this during the next few years before the final landing site decision will be taken...............
That a 'is still today' mud volcano type site could make an outside run in the final straight to challenge the late Amazonian phylosillicate sites. Worth watching!
In 2000 Nasa choose to expand the envelop for MER 2003 Mission in 30% to have two roover before one previously decided.
Now the budget of MSL is over 2 Billions, so with maybe 700 millions more we could have second MSL to launch in 2013, so a back up MSL in case of failure of launch, or landing of the MSL 2011, or a second site to explore in Mars...so sad that nasa don't think about this possibility.
And now with the 2,5 billions that senate want to give to Nasa for have shuttle program continuing in 2011, we can have 3 more MSL, so the possibily to explore 4 sites with a launch in 2011, another in 2013 and two in 2016 (with planet Mars in a most favourable situation).
I know, i known... i'm dreaming .
PS: Sorry for my bad english.
I know the sites of the potential mud volcano that were recently reported differ from the sites of the methane venting reported earlier, based on ground based observations by a team led by Michael Mumma of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and as reported in New Scientist (as quoted below):
“We observed and mapped multiple plumes of methane on Mars, one of which released about 19,000 metric tonnes of methane,” team member Geronimo Villanueva of the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, said in a statement.
“The plumes were emitted during the warmer seasons, spring and summer, perhaps because ice blocking cracks and fissures vaporised, allowing methane to seep into the Martian air,” he added.
One of the three regions is centred on a rift called Nili Fossae, which had until late last year been considered as a possible landing site for NASA’s one-tonne rover, the Mars Science Laboratory, which is set to launch in 2011.
The two other hotspots, each some 1000 kilometres away, have different geologies.
One centres on the southeastern region of the volcano Syrtis Major. The other is a flatter, cratered region called Terra Sabae.
If MSL is now going to be partially dependent on solar power, does this not eliminate consideration of the landing sites well off the equator?
Skimmed the slides last night, and IIRC the main constraint driving the panel suggestion is the inability to operate a couple of the subsystems simultaneously? If that's correct, then an operational/procedural workaround would seem more practical (and less risky) than a major design change at this late stage.
Some news on the landing site front. A year ago a shortlist of four sites was chosen, but recognizing that newer data might identify better candidates the site selection team asked for new suggestions last summer. A new site would only be considered if it was at least as good as the four on the shortlist.
Seven new sites were suggested and two of them have been chosen for additional remote sensing to see how they stack up against the shortlist.
Details here:
http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/index.html
(PS look down that page - there's a section called 'from the public' hosting a few site visualizations... looks like an invitation to UMSF to add more!)
Phil
...more musings on a caffeine powered Sunday night (I should really do something about that)
I was over at the MSL Landing Site Workshop website for a few hours and ...boy.... PLEASE PICK GALE!
5km central mound that's traverse-able (that's Pikes Peak tall, 14,000 to 16,000 feet, depending where you are in the crater)
layers, sediments, most likely an ancient lake was there, and the mystery -- the mound itself. The top is higher than the crater walls. Good Luck MSL Steering Committee with your final choice next year!
Have there been any known recent active gullies spied at Gale?
Hoping for Holden or Eberswalde personally, for the fluvial features. But I'm sure they'd all be interesting.
Ok, this is off topic for MSL, though on topic for site selection... but it's not worth starting a new thread for. So I'll throw it in here.
This is a page of illustrations of potential landing sites for Mars Surveyor 2001, from the second landing site workshop just before it was cancelled. I'm posting it to celebrate (almost) finishing the first draft of my Mars atlas and my upcoming vacation.
The original plan for the mission was to carry a large rover similar to MER, and somewhere else I posted some proposed traverses for that. Then the rover was shrunk to Sojourner-class with a range of only about 1000 m, so most people didn't propose traverses. But there was one - from Nathan Bridges - which is included here. It's not a 'must-do' traverse, but a sample of what might be possible. Incidentally, trying to find that location was not simple. There are some serious flaws in the VIking image coordinates database, including its representation on the THEMIS Viking Image Map system. Sometimes the coordinates for late-mission high resolution frames are 2 or 3 degeees off.
And what about Tim Parker's 'Ibishead Peninsula'? That's no Ibis, that's a rabbit!
Phil
The trick of course is to have the intact wheels still attatched to a 100 % functioning rover .
Thx so much Tanya for joining this community: great outreach! - Those considerations of yours are VERY interesting reading.
For the moment my ambitions are to get Curiosity down safe and sound, even if it were on the most boring parking lot of Mars!
Will the landing site meeting on Sept 27-29, produce the final destination?
No.
Hmm. You know, final targeting doesn't really have to happen very long before launch (maybe even for a substantial period afterward?), so I don't see any urgency about selecting a site right now.
Heck, who knows; with MSL's precision landing capability, MRO might spot a really choice location that blows the others away literally any time between now & then.
Although the final choice doesn't need to be made before launch, if MER is any guide, then a latitude band will need to be chosen at launch, so a downselection will need to be made.
Anyway, the upcoming meeting is one for the Mars science community to make input. There'll be a straw poll held at the end of it I'm sure. But the final decision won't even be made by the mission. It'll be made by HQ, based on presentations on both engineering and science constraints made by the mission.
Nick, I doubt they'll be looking at any new sites. They have brought so many assets to bear on the current list of options, from HiRISE to CRISM to CTX stereo to THEMIS to god knows how many atmospheric models, that it's probably too late in the game for something new to come to the fore. Which isn't to say that there aren't any scientists who won't TRY to make a new suggestion. That'll be sort of fun to watch, but mostly just a waste of everyone's time.
I'll be going to at least some of this meeting, yay.
Looking forward to your dispatch from the front, Emily! I imagine that these can be quite contentious.
Think of Emily doing a live play-by-play ustream of the event, a la http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92vV3QGagck
For some reason the Python link didn't work for me so I did a
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=philosophers+world+cup+monty+python=1
and chose the second option.
I hope it works or I shall taunt you a second time you son of a window dresser!
The 4th MSL landing site workshop is ongoing and Emily has a thorough and insightful write-up on her blog at http://planetary.org/blog/article/00002685/
Eluchil
And for those of us who can't get enough MSL landing site workshop news, Ryan Anderson's also blogging it at http://martianchronicles.wordpress.com.
Are additional MSL landing site workshops (i.e, 5th, 6th) already scheduled for 2011?
The next (and final) one is in mid-May.
Methane won't figure into it. The selection is mostly based on looking at ancient clays and other water-altered or -deposited materials, plus (of course) site safety and accessibility of the outcrops. The new landing site workshop will be about identifying specific outcrops for study at each site, traverses which give access to them, and maybe potential for extended missions. Methane needs to be much better characterized by future orbiters before it can be a factor in site selection. It might just possibly affect selection for the 2018 rovers.
Phil
Just curious, which landing site do you see as the most scientificly rich?
They're all scientifically rich, they're all safe for landing.
You should start by reading the presentations to the 4th MSL Landing Site Workshop
http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/msl/workshops/4th_workshop/program.html
But would you say they're all equally rich, all equally safe?
Go and read the meeting presentations and find out for yourself.
All four are safe enough, that is for sure.
As for which is most scientifically interesting....ask four scientists and you'll get four totally different answers. There is no 'right' landing site.
From what I've seen from the presentations I am inclined to favour Mawrth Vallis as my first choice for Curiosity!Eberswalde would be my second choice ..wish we had a twin rover that we could target this site as well!Mawrth being the oldest location out of the 4 landing sites makes it top choice.We should start reading a history book from the first chapter ..later chapters will make more sense if we get the the first chapter right.
We can only go to one of the four sites... on this mission. But don't despair if your favorite site isn't picked. The other three remain as fantastic sites, extraordinarily well documented, and it's quite possible that they will be considered again in future. Just as Meridiani was the front-runner for Mars Surveyor 2001, and Gale was a MER candidate.
My preference is for... basically any site except Mawrth. Nothing wrong with Mawrth for the primary mission, but after that I'm not sure that there is an exciting extended mission. The other sites seem to offer extensive opportunities for extended traverses. But any site will be great when we're on the ground.
Phil
After spending some great quality time rereading this thread, I have a few queries:
Do weather patterns, i.e. seasonal dust storms, play into the process for choosing a location?
Has our experience landing previous rovers improved our accuracy in predicting the degree of atmospheric drag?
(As mentioned earlier in this thread, Opportunity experienced a G-force on impact on the low end of the predicted range)
Do random gusts of wind affect the incoming G-force more than general measurements of atmospheric effects?
Elevation plays a role; does the weather change falling into a large basin?
In summary, how's the weather up there? Does it matter?
Does MSL have a dust mop??
Thanks, and this is such a wonderful site! Long live UMSF!
To be honest, I've had concerns in that vein regarding the steering differential lever (?) on the top deck; seems like a prime region for foreign material intrusion, and I wouldn't be too surprised if martian dust has abrasive properties.
No more worrying than, say, the rocker bogie of MER. Passive mechanical linkages are probably not at significant risk. Motors / Flex-Cables etc...those are the troublesome parts.
I much prefer Eberswalde, just avoid the built-up area:
http://www.google.be/maps?ll=52.833106,13.819599&spn=0.023179,0.066047&t=h&z=15&iwloc=lyrftr:com.panoramio.all,pp:13104377,52.833119,13.81961&lci=com.panoramio.all
Jokes aside: a river delta fed by MEANDERING rivers! - What is there not to like?
http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/msl/workshops/4th_workshop/talks/6_Dietrich_Eberswalde_opt.pdf
- Great read.
So we've got the Fifth MSL Landing Site Workshop (May 16 - May 18, 2011)
http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/index.html
Here is a nice quick characteristics of the landing sites (pros, cons, unknowns)
http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/msl/workshops/5th_workshop/First_Draft_Quad_Charts_for_5th_Workshop.ppt
Fifth MSL Landing Site Workshop presentations
http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/msl/workshops/5th_workshop/program.html
Can't wait to see MSL on Mars...
The workshop is available for viewing/listening via a Webex feed (https://jpl.webex.com) and anyone can sign up to see/hear. I've been listening and watching out of the corner of my ears/eyes for the last couple of days and it is fascinating to watch the process take place. For each site they are fighting over a "quad chart" that delineates the Overarching Hypothesis; the Possible Pros; Possible Cons; and Remaining Uncertainties. These have been developed over the prior MSL Landing Site Workshops and are being modified as they speak. There were a couple of days of presentations and now an open discussion, site by site, of the Pros, Cons, and Uncertainties. Very interesting (even though most of it is a bit above my head -- I get the gist of the discussion).
It's not that simple, though. Paolo showed a chart today that made it clear that of the four sites, Mawrth makes for the slowest and most challenging driving. (Eberswalde is also on the difficult side, compared to Gale and Holden.) Why would we go to a place where we had to fight our way across ripples and around undriveable slopes if we could go to a place with clear driving between science sites, where blind driving plus autonav can take us far, far away from our landing site into a new geologic context? Field geology is all about traverses -- going as far as you can, sampling along the way, to see how things change, look for geologic contacts, and always keep moving.
I'm not actually saying I prefer other sites over Mawrth. People keep asking me which one I prefer, and I just don't have a favorite, because to have a favorite I would need to understand all the arguments better, and I just haven't been paying good enough attention. The one I am most concerned about is Eberswalde, because there is a distinct possibility that that incredible delta system all formed in a very short period of time, so I think it would be less valuable than the longer geologic histories represented at the other sites.
I think Emily has an excellent point. One thing to remember is that MSL is likely to be quite long-lived, even by MER standards (yeah, that was a shout-out! ) Inherently sudden/catastrophic events are interesting in their own right, but they have more of a gee-whiz factor than a root science potential.
Maybe the debate should refocus on the science objectives in this context. My understanding, though it might be wrong, is that one of MSL's core goals is to ascertain not only whether Mars once possessed a habitable environment but also (crucial point) how long it may have persisted. Eberswalde does not seem to offer as much potential to address that question as some of the others.
John Grant and Matt Golombek kept coming back to the tired metaphor of apples and oranges. Mawrth is apples; the other three are oranges. In the room there are people who prefer one or the other, have spent their careers studying one or the other, and really, no amount of argument is going to change their minds. Changing their minds wasn't really the point, which is why no vote was taken. The minds that matter are the ones who were sitting in the front row -- John and Matt, John Grotzinger, the engineers, the HQ folks. They will make the decision between apples and oranges.
MSL Landing Site team:
Holden seems like Gusev... to this armchair martian explorer, do we really want to look at another volcanic littered and billion year wind-swept and dust covered crater? Is there a Home Plate fumarole there to study... or mud volcanoes?
The delta of Eberswalde may not be easy to maneuver around; and its a negative delta, the braids, are now raised very high.
Mawrth... what a place. An extensive valley with everything at your landing spot.
And then the 150 mile Gale Crater. It has a Pike's Peak sized mountain in the middle. The experts don't know what it is or how it got there. Within the crater is a crazy deep and layered valley that we can cozy up to and study (albeit, from afar). The traverse up Pike should reveal many surprises.
What is the purpose of MSL? looking for water? looking for geographic layers? looking for life? or just maybe exploring the unknown and unknowable? If we lived on Mars and tried to pick a landing spot on Earth a half a million years ago, would we choose the Sahara or the Grand Canyon?
Pick one.
Explore, seek, and learn. The landing attempt via the sky crane is very bold engineering. Landing Site Pickers: be bold.
Pick one.
With the history of exploration as our guide, this is a just the beginning of exploration. You really can't pick wrong.
Pick one.
< i now step off my soapbox ... thank you >
They are all excellent sites. I must say, though, that unlike MER where I become a convert to Gusev after reading a presentation about how the Athena science payload could be used to directly test hypotheses there, I already had my mind basically made up. When I first saw the meanders of Eberswalde (back when it had no name and was called Holden NE for reference) I knew that was where I wanted a lander to go.
In reality, there are real concerns about the site and one of the others may be just as good or better, but emotionally it would be a literal dream come true to have a lander at Eberswalde.
More generally, I think that morphology provides more concrete hypotheses to test than mineralogy does. And a clear result, even a negative result like that ultimately derived at Gusev, is very valuable.
This decision is the battle of mineralogists vs. geomorphologists all over again, and we know who "won" the fight, at least initially, on MER: Meridiani (the mineralogists' choice) provided almost instantly the results that the mission was searching for, while Spirit wound up in the infamous "basalt prison," not finding evidence for past water until Pot o'gold. So it would seem obvious to pick Mawrth. But there is a HUUUUGE difference this time around: MRO. Between HiRISE and CRISM the amount we know about what's there to see at outcrop scale has increased by orders of magnitude. Remember it's CRISM data that's drawing Opportunity all the way to Endeavour. CRISM certainly points to Mawrth as a very interesting spot. But HiRISE has equivocal stuff to say about Mawrth. And if you can't understand the local geologic context, no matter what you learn at the landing site you won't be able to understand its implications for other places on Mars, which would represent a failure of at least one mission goal (though if Curiosity sees dinosaur bones at Mawrth, no one will care about that particular failure).
Another point is that the mission people, Grotzinger especially, keeps hammering on, is this preservation issue. We'd like to know if there were organics present at a time where there was water and energy, because these are the ingredients for life (we think). But organics get destroyed so easily by water. Mawrth is so ancient, and appears to have had so much water (relative to other places) that you have to question whether any organics that may have been present would have been preserved. I wasn't there, but I suspect that it was concerns like this that led Bibring to comment "I am amazed that now we are saying there's too much water on Mars!" (a quote reported via Twitter). I was talking with Jeff Kargel afterward and he said that his impression was that the best hope for preservation would be in stacks of rocks that contained both phyllosilicates and evaporitic stuff, implying occasional total drying out of the landscape. Mawrth does have the evaporitic stuff in the form of sulfates. So does Gale. Mawrth has higher abundance of these interesting minerals (though it's really incredibly difficult to get abundances out of spectra, so that statement could be false). Gale has a thicker section.
Back and forth. If forced to bet, I'd hedge by laying money on both Mawrth and Gale. I'm told it's entirely possible that the mission will narrow the choices down to two and punt to HQ for the final decision. But I hope they don't -- that seems like a kind of cowardly way out.
I'm still GO for Mawrth!! Lets get down to business straight away and not waste time driving .....we'll have time to study ancient martian history which we havent done yet from the ground..done with that, we can then drive to other sites provided the goals are met early in the mission.. all extra will be bonus!! Besides we dont have any guarantees the mission will last as long as MERs
Well said, Doug.
To me, it all comes back to a careful read of the stated science goals. Somewhat unfortunately, this isn't much of a discriminator; Mars has a very rich history as is increasingly revealed by MRO & other orbiters, reinforced by the ground truth of the MERs. On top of it all, the EDL system is purportedly robust enough to handle any of the four finalists
I can well understand the indecision. If we were to land on Earth, where would we go to achieve maximum science return? I don't even have a clue. Mars is not as environmentally diverse as Earth, but it's a hell of a lot more diverse than we originally thought not too long ago.
There's probably not a right answer. All remaining candidate sites have something to offer. Therefore, to be utterly pragmatic & honest, it's time to ask the engineers. They apparently are saying that they can set MSL down anywhere the scientists want it to be, but surely one of these sites is easier than the other three iin some respect. I suggest that they should be consulted for a high-res look at exactly which site offers the least landing risk if there are no other compelling discriminatory factors.
Bottom line is that there's gotta be a choice made soon. MSL has the potential to conduct a regional survey of its landing site. Which area would provide the maximum information with respect to the major questions about Mars and its history given that capability?
Of course I expect some driving to get to targeted sites but driving 1 km to get science is certainly preferable than having to drive 30km!! Requirement for mission success is 2 years for MSL which is more robust than MER... yes I see your point Doug but it doesnt mean that it will last that long.....dont get me wrong, I wish MSL all the success and better science returns than MER but you never know what MARS may hold for MSL!!??
This is a beginner's question, quite possibly asked and answered before. Suppose Curiosity were heading with few distractions toward a distant target much as Opportunity is now, what distance is it expected to cover in one good day?
I'm hoping MSL will last a lifetime! I'm not in a postion to judge on the eventual site selected and I trust that the engineers and scientists will make the best choice at the end. All I am saying is that I prefer Mawrth for the simple reason that it represents the earliest Martian history compared to the other sites. Its like reading a book..u want to read from the start rather than start from the middle section for it to make more sense. This is my judgement. Whether I am right or wrong I'll leave it to the people directly involved in this decision.I'll be happy with whatever they decide. At the end of the day what counts is that we'll have another Mars mission to follow for years to come and that makes me excited wherever it happens on Mars!
To say that "To make any assumption other than [the design requirements] is folly" is not entirely accurate. If I may reference a manned program, remember that the first task that Neil Armstrong had upon getting onto the Moon's surface was to scoop up a contingency sample in case something unforeseen went wrong and he had to get out of there quickly. The design requirement for the LM was to stay on the Moon for 24 hours, but prudence dictated preparing for the unexpected.
Given the investment in the MSL platform and that there's just one shot at getting the science from her, prudence would seem to dictate putting her as close as possible to the priority targets of interest within the constraints of EDL etc. and not assuming that just because she's designed to last 2 years, she will necessarily have that long.
Just one person's view, but I think it would be be good to lay off the landing site discussion. I live in Wales, FWIW.
How long do they have to decide on the final site? Could it even be left for after launch, or do course corrections and such have to be planned out way ahead?
I believe that it does have to be decided before launch, since MSL will be on a direct trajectory to Mars just like the MERs, Phoenix, and Pathfinder. (The Vikings were in Mars orbit first, so they at least could select from sites achievable from their orbital planes.) Don't think that the cruise stage will be capable of doing anything but minor course corrections & attitude adjustments.
Dig it. I suspect that retargeting is far from the most desired course of action, though; not only would it cost considerable enroute consumables, it would also decrease landing precision as you described, Dan.
one of the presenters with, I believe a Gale crater paper,presented a proposed route along with the geology to be found at each elevation.
http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/msl/workshops/5th_workshop/talks/Tuesday_AM/Anderson_Gale_Traverse_compressed_final_opt.pdf
if indeed all of these sites have compelling scientific merit, then there is one more factor to be considered,
The impact of images returned to the public imagination!
I remember watching on TV the Apollo 8 mission, and the earth rise photographs.The Gale creator presenter promised a compelling scenery, perhaps it is this consideration that should be added to the final decision.
the public so engaged might very well influence future decisions on planetary exploration.if all 4 candidates are scientificly compelling and are equaly safe for landing, http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/msl/workshops/5th_workshop/talks/Wednesday_AM/Golombek_5th_Work_Char_v2.pdf then pick one that holds promise to excite the public imagination to ask for more funding for future exploration.
Hubble is an example of such a machine that excites the public imagination.
Come to think of it it really is TCM1 not launch that is the drop dead date. Though the decision will be made and announced before then I am sure. At launch the space-craft is targeted slightly away from Mars so that the third stage of the rocket doesn't hit the planet. It's too big to sterilize and everything that hits Mars has to be relatively clean of bacteria according to the http://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov/. Thus it's only with TCM1 that the spacecraft is aimed directly at Mars at all giving a fairly wide choice of landing sites from any single launch profile.
"http://www1.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/images/20081209_msl.htmlThe pump circulates temperature-regulating fluid through the rover's body with 200 feet of tubes.
.... On Mars, the pump must run constantly, and if it failed, the rover would die."
Oh, great. One more failure mode to worry about.
I get the impression that following the MSL's progress through it's mission will have the same temporal feeling as following the MER missions. The MSL will not move from spot to spot any faster. And there will always be energy restraints placed on how fast science can be done at any one spot. Of course MSL can move into much more challenging terrain than MER and do a lot more science, but I think we will experience the same level of "are we there yet" and "when will we be moving on" feelings as we do with MER.
MSL produces about four times as much energy as the MERs, but it weighs over four times as much. The science payload, I'm sure, uses at least four times as much energy as the MER payload on average. So the energy budget restrictions for roving and science should be about the same for MSL as for MER.
This topic has been split at the point that the downselection to Gale was made. http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=7020
Powered by Invision Power Board (http://www.invisionboard.com)
© Invision Power Services (http://www.invisionpower.com)